146 Chapter 4
The combination of high costs and the reputation of mass tourism as a
rigorous sporting activity kept tourism out of the public consciousness in
the fi rst fi ve years after the war. About 10,000 people participated in tours in
1946, the fi rst full year after the war, well below the peak of 250,000 in 1939.
Only in 1950 did the volume of tourist traffi c begin to increase noticeably
and the capacity of tourist destinations start to recover. The overall numbers
of tourists remained low. In 1950 the Soviet Union offered to its citizens
2,070 sanatoria and 891 rest homes, but only 81 tourist bases and alpine
camps existed to serve vacations on the road.^44Access and Status: The Reassertion of Privilege
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, sober economic realities meant that not
every Soviet citizen who was entitled to a vacation—whether on a tourist
trail, in a forest rest home, or in a marble seaside sanatorium—could actually- GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 31 (TEU reports, 1946), l. 15; Trud , 22 September 1945; a So-
chi example in GARF, f. 9520, op. 1, d. 260, l. 41; f. 7576, op. 14, d. 63; Narodnoe khoziaistvo
SSSR v 1956 godu , 275.
Tourist base on the shore of Lake Seliger, August 1951. RGAKFD g. Krasnogorsk, no. 0226468.
Used with permission of the archive.